Hebdomadally, I visit the library. They lend novels, and I read ‘em. And incidents do happen in-between. I’m going to talk about these things, and you are going to read/listen. ~Hah~
Disclaimer: Don’t take for granted that all the below events are true. Some might be fictitious; incidents with any resemblance to actual events or locales are purely coincidental.
Coming to the post, I’ve been racking my brain hard to re-collect all the incidents that happened since my infancy. It took pains to recall them in all of a sudden. Eventually, I’m putting all my ability to arrange a few words together and string a proper sentence. Read on.
Novels are umpteen, and so are the authors. Favorites are afew and run-of-the-mills are aplenty. And what is the first thing that you look for, while choosing a book? Blurb? Author? Book title?
Well, I’m not choosy about the books, which I’m going to read or the authors either. If I find the blurb interesting, then without giving it a second thought, I go for it. I’d love to spend a good deal of time reading a book but I agree, I’m not an avid/voracious reader, books are my ‘first love’ though. I’d love to read all the books in a month or perhaps in a year’s time, but will life long procrastination, assist me in completing this herculean task? And because of my impecuniousness, rather than lying on the couch and having the material in my hand, I’m straining out my pair of oculi reading the e-books downloaded, free of charge, on my system.
Well, here are some of the authors I’d like to list and relate some of the incidents, if any, that has happened.
Sidney Sheldon: They charged an exorbitant amount for a membership; it was a pretty penny for me. And to understand my plight then, I was penurious, flat broke, and penniless. In spite of all that, I managed to pay 250 bucks to the librarian and in return, she issued a membership card with a membership no. 2179 on 07/07/’07. Guess what? I was gazing at the card for quite some time while typing this blog entry and only now did the numbers really, impress me. Now that’s an especial date, innit? Well, now don’t you think that it is something easy to commemorate too? Perhaps, the day when boredom died off? Ah, whatever, this was the day when I got registered as one of the members of the Little Lending Library and it all started with a Sidney Sheldon book. Don’t ask me the title. Of late, I’m oblivious. Something seriously wrong with my wet ware, I guess. Never mind. Just a book or two left to complete from His shelf.
Paulo Coelho: If you are a regular reader of my blog, this must be a deja-vu for you. This name reminds me of the day when I stumbled over to pronounce His last name and eventually ended up getting offended by the librarian. Sue me if I spell or pronounce His name incorrectly again. Gone are the days when I used to mumble Paulo err., C…o…elho. Now I feel pretty good that I’m enunciating his name perfectly right. Hmmm, I did not know this maven until a friend of mine recommended Paulo Coelho’s books to me. Yep, a guy who had a special liking to His style of writing, and who failed to reveal his other favorite authors just because His works were unrivaled; one and only, and who kept reiterating that He was his reigning favorite. Somehow I read the best book in my life; ‘The Alchemist’ that is. My thanks to Him, thanks to him as well.
John Grisham: On social networking sites, I always have the habit of checking out my friends’ profile, (hell no, I don’t stalk in the cyberspace) especially the books recommended on the profile by the person. I felt sick to my stomach when a friend of mine spelled His name fallaciously. I could not bear that anymore. Unwittingly I tried to rebuke him and turned aggressive spitting out harsh words at him. Note that I was the one who scrapped him in the first place. I was sure of the spelling but I pondered for a while, and to make myself clear, typed in ‘John Gresham’ on wikipedia.org and hit the go button. I was taken by surprise and imagine my eerie feeling when a person like the one I mentioned above, existed on earth. And imagine the trepidation which appeared and disappeared in a flash. Eventually he came out with a lame excuse saying that it was a typo. That should’ve been a real bummer. Hmph, I really thanked God for saving my skin. Ah, a sigh of relief at last.
Ayn Rand: Remind people of Her, and people talk about the time frames. The novelist, philosopher, playwright, and the screen writer, Ayn Rand is an author whose story tellings are interminable and who always enjoys her works to be published in small fonts, and while reading her book, I had my microscope and magnifier handy, anyway. Considering the minuscule font, it was practically impossible to complete it within a week’s time and the ones who claim to have done that within a day or two should either be a superhuman or Godlike. If my memory serves me correctly, I was gifted with one Ayn Rand penned ‘Atlas Shrugged’ book and believe me, it took approximately a friggin’ decade to complete the book. Huh, do you humor me on this? And I tell you, I was completely exhausted, fatigued, dog-tired, and drained of energy after reading the book, it was a pretty interesting read, though. From the reader’s list, Ayn Rand’s novels are on top of the list. It’s something worthy of high praise. No doubt, writers of Her talent and caliber are a few and far between.
P.G. Wodehouse: I have no intent on eulogizing him, but let me just ask you a question. Do you store up all the phrases and later mull them over, when you are in the midst of the populace and laugh your arse off with your unsuppressed titters? Or while reading his books, did you laugh at something that was broadly or extravagantly humorous? Having heard all that, I wanted to complete one of the books at a stretch. So the only option was to download the audio version and listen to the audio programme. Seriously, I tried to be in a jocular mood all day while listening to the audio book and wanted to stretch my laugh lines further, but it did not amuse me even to the least overwhelming extent, all I could settle for was the podcast which comprised of different dialects and accents. It was so deadening, draggy, and wearisome that even my mind went for fishing. I should say, I was thoroughly disappointed.
P.S. These are just some of the incidents that took place. I’m not trying to disgrace any author. They are great, whatsoever.
Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year, people.
As a matter of fact, Life’s little lessons is neither a rhapsody nor an odyssey. The author here, is trying to rack his brain as much as possible, attempting to recollect those life’s lil’ lessons and is trying to present ‘em in the best way possible. Perhaps, Life’s little lessons are the real life incidents, the author has faced in his lifetime and I bet you’ll not find these lil’ lessons in any Jeffrey Archer’s works. Duh, that was an allusion, pardon me. Enough of the trivial introduction, all right, here they are!
Lesson#1: There’s a big difference between a “Hi” and a “Hello”. So read on and use ‘em properly. Damn.
Location: At my friend’s place, on the outskirts of Chennai.
This is a boring lesson. Last year by the end of August, I was visiting my friend’s place. I don’t know for what reason I went there, was it a social call, an extended stay at his place, a casual conversation, an official inspection, or for boarding a ship, I don’t know. Alright, by noon I reached his place and he received me with a bittersweet welcome. Ah, after a casual conversation, he introduced me to his sister who was actually 3 years elder to me. On seeing her for the first time, I greeted her saying a “hello”, and received a hello back. After she left the place, my friggin’ friend pointed out that one should not greet elders with a “hello”, “hi” is the word to be inserted there! Say hello to some one who is younger to you! Duh, what a bummer? I was dumbstruck.
Lesson#2: Always check if your pants are zipped before you move out from your place.
Location: City Centre, R.K Salai, Chennai.
I was visiting this place for the first time in my life. I was on a cock-a-hop. Alright, after watching a matinée show at Inox, I was getting down the stairs. To the uninformed, escalators and elevators were available at every nook and corner of the building. As I was descending on an escalator with some of my fellow-mates, I was in for a big surprise. A lame person who was snooping there for quite some time was shouting at me. I could not figure out and was wondering what he was up to. He saw me and pointing at my groin and yelled, zippu pa, zippu, only then I could realize, I forgot to zip my pants! Before I could turn around, my friends were already rolling on the floor with laughter. Damn! Oh, what an embarrassment? Alright, young man. Thanks a lot for reminding me. Eh, a lesson well learnt by me and the people around, within ear reach.
Lesson#3: Bikes/bicycles cannot scale walls. Despite what they show in cartoon and elsewhere.
Location: Somewhere down the road. I can’t rack my brain hard, I’m forgetful.
This one is a bit painful if you don’t have enough balance. When I was in my early teens I was very much obsessed with people who perform various stunts with their bikes/bicycles. In spite of the television advertisers who flash a statutory warning, saying not to imitate this or not to imitate that and that they’re performed by experts, I went on. I did not pay any heed to ‘em, in fact who cares a damn about that? Alright, I don’t want to elucidate what happened here. I tried to impress a girl and eventually ended up with bruises all over my body. Oh, what a crazy bugger am I? Why did I try to impress or catch the attention of that female? What did I gain? Huh, nothing! Poor me.
Lesson#4: When you’re involved in a heated argument with someone, don’t stab the person with a sharply pointed tip of a pencil.
Location: At my school.
This is the one that hurts the most, especially when when you don’t wear your undies. The folks in school keep pestering me like crazy. They have the habit of making fun of my stature. I agree I’m short but what if they go beyond the limits?, Ah, simple. I call them names. Alright, I know you can perceive the situation. When I was at the back of a god damned fellow, I realized that, that was my moment. I had a sharply pointed tip of a pencil and with my bare hands stabbed him with that on his buttocks and I ran for my life. LMAO! That would have hurt him a lot, I guess. Sorry mate.
Lesson#5: Don’t ever touch the calling bell. Knock at the door instead. It’s safe too.
Location: At home, sweet home.
I remember a person who came to my home, one fine afternoon and hit the calling bell. That was a god damned idea I should say, he should have knocked at the door instead. As there is no grill in front of the door by the entrance, it will take only a matter of seconds to greet the person in. As soon as the doorbell was rung, it started giving an ugly cry. There was some problem with the buzzer and eventually the buzz did not stop. It started making a hell of a noise like some old tape-recorder loaded with a half-dead battery. I stood there anxiously waiting for it to come to a standstill, so was my brother and so were my parents and so was the man. Eww, I could see the embarrassment on everyone’s face. Damn, that sounds really bad, doesn’t it?
Lesson#7: Serial number, experiment, observation, inference and result!
Location: In the Chemistry lab.
To a pinch of the mixture, a few drops of ethyl alcohol and concentrated sulphuric acid are added and the mixture is heated in a test tube and it’s then poured into a dilute solution of sodium bicarbonate. Finally note the smell emanating from the test tube. Argh, I don’t remember the experiment properly, pardon me. It’s also advisable not to carry out this experiment in the chemistry lab or elsewhere without adult supervision. Err., what am I talking about? Wait a second, while going through all this you definitely missed the 6th lesson, didn’t you? All right, things are going haywire now, I suppose my mind has gone fishing. So I stop here.
P.S- Kindly note that these real life incidents did not happen in the same way as mentioned above. I’ve randomly numbered them for my convenience.
I thought of posting this entry a long time back but time did not permit me to do this or one reason leading to the other should have caused this delay, I guess. Gosh, even today there was a power cut so I had to save this post as a draft and then publish it later. First, let me just spell out my name, it’s S-A-R-I-N G-O-P-A-N and the last part of the name is obviously the surname. The first name is what I feel creates a hell lot of problems. Next coming to its pronunciation, it’s not possible for me to do that here but I guess, you people will pronounce it correctly. “Sarin” is the name of a river I reckon, in Switzerland, but only later on did I realize that it was the name of a poisonous gas too. Here let me just introduce 3 strangers who have really misunderstood my name, and who tried to play the fool with me, here they are.
Stranger 1: Hi da hw r u? How often’ve you received such kinda corny questions on your mobile? From an unknown number and not wanting to reveal his identity. Perhaps what would a person think normally? I’m not sure but this is what my stupid pea-sized brain thought; maybe I know this person or I will just ask who it is. And this is the reply I got: ver r u studying da? Now this just pissed me off first of all, ’cause this person didn’t answer my question in the first place. Instead he posed another question and referred to me as ‘da’ as if I was his sidekick or something. So I did not reply. After some time ‘Y not replyng da? msgs nt reching u?’ Eww, that lingo looked like they were written by people suffering from dyslexia. I stared at the message feeling sick to my stomach, that idiot didn’t use his dictionary on his phone or he didn’t know how to spell words either. And when I see a person like that, whoever it is, I immediately lose respect for that person and mock him/her cruelly. Using ‘u’ for you and ‘ur’ for your is okay but what’s the use in writing ‘reching’ to imply ‘reaching’ when you’re not really shortening the word, it is only one letter, for Pete’s sake. He probably thinks this way of writing is cool. That went on for quite some time and later I myself thought of revealing it, I said I was a he and not a she as you would imagine. He felt dimwitted and he never messaged me back!
Stranger 2: This happened 5 or 6 months back I reckon. One evening I received an unsolicited message. Excerpts: “hey i dont know who you are but some stupid guy is messaging my number to you.” Honestly, I stood dumbstruck staring at this message. First of all, I never understood what it meant as I was feeling very dizzy, and promptly asked who this was? And again the same crap, “hey i … you” Holy fuck! Then he asked my name and to which department I belong to. I understood, this was actually a come-hither-kinda guy from my college. So I replied ‘Sarin Gopan, Computer science department’. I could not tolerate the nonsense anymore as he was getting on my nerves, so I messaged my friends and asked who this bastard was. I got a reply from one of them- he asked me to hang on for a moment, instead I thought of calling my friend right away, he said that it was ***, a guy from EC department from my batch. So my friend told to continue this, I certainly had no plans of doing this but my friend insisted me to carry on. This went on for days together and it was really a pain in the ass, sending replies to this jack ass dumbo. One fine day, one fine night he called. I pressed the answer button unintentionally and said hello. When he heard my voice he hung up, he had a certain element of doubt and so wanted to make things certain, but after realizing who I was, he felt embarrassed. Oh, I thought of continuing this at least for a month but it was my mistake, really that should’ve been fun. He even threatened me for doing such a thing. I’m afraid not, I was ready for anything.
Stranger 3: Chat rooms are interesting and when you have a name like mine, you can’t ask for more, can you? What do you have to say about those jobless freaks who lurk around, attending cheap online classes, and try to hit on women? And asking ASLs, pleading all the way and posing all sort of idiotic questions? Now, let me just rack my brain and tell you an incident that took place months back. Here it is. I got an IM from a guy, he started talking to me and from my name, he took me for granted that I was a missy. Yet another male troll masquerading! What the fuck! And started typing in all the crap that he usually uses while trying to hit on girls. I told myself ah, this should be fun and continued disguising as a girl. What was even funny, I unleashed all my sarcasm on that poor guy and that conversation with me would have mutilated his online existence. Poor chap. As I expected, that turned out to be freaking hilarious. The questions he asked was enough to crack me up all day. It was getting crazy. It was about time, I had to give up. Eventually, in the nick of the time I told him the person to whom you were talking to was a guy and not a girl. Run for your life now, and get a life, you loser! And finally ignoring me, he let out a sigh of relief. Obviously, after a long time that should have pissed him off. Seriously how on earth can a girl endure all these lousy, senseless and trivial talks in the cyberspace and elsewhere? I really feel pity for them.
Jokes apart. Perhaps, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life is when a lecturer reads out my name loudly, they certainly don’t know how to pronounce my name(but some try and manage it) but I still wonder how easy, it is for people to pronounce a name, say for example Pranatharthiharan(a school friend of mine) but the people pronounce it perfectly! I even know a friggin’ Tamil actor from the Tamil film industry with a slight modification of my name and folks even call me by that name. My bad. I even compressed my name like YESJI(SG), I know it sounds really weird. I copied this idea from a friend of mine (AARJAY)R J RAMYA. Perhaps, I feel I have a very good name and anyone who hears my name for the first time keep asking me what it means and from where I got this name. Such a stupid question, I don’t know, my parents named me!
P.S- The acronym STFU stands for Shut The Fuck Up. You don’t have to ponder on the title anymore .
Thank you.
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